Yang Wang is a specialist of modern and contemporary Asian art with an emphasis on Chinese art of the twentieth century. Her first book, Yellow Earth: Regional Chinese Ink Painting and Global Postwar Modernism, under contract with Harvard University Asia Center, examines the confluence of regionalism, neo-traditionalism, Cold War cultural exchange, and ink painting in the early People’s Republic of China. Her research has been supported by Fulbright, ACLS, Getty, American Oriental Society, and P.E.O. International. As an extension of her scholarship and broader interests in collective practice, politicized aesthetics, transnationalism, and Asian diasporic art, she has curated exhibitions on modern and contemporary Chinese, Korean, and Nepalese art.
She teaches a wide variety of courses on Asian art, global modern and contemporary art, as well as thesis research.
Areas of Expertise
Asian art;
Modern and Contemporary art
Education, Licensure & Certifications
Ohio State University
PHD; Art Hidtory
MA; Art History
University of Missouri
BFA; Art
BA; Art History
Awards
2022 Excellence in Research, College of Arts & Media, University of Colorado Denver
2022 Celebrate Equity Award, College of Arts & Media, University of Colorado Denver
Research
"Yellow Earth: Regional Chinese Ink Painting and Global Postwar Modernism." Book manuscript in preparation.
Publications and Presentations
“Representations of Communist Mobility in Post-WWII China-Italy Cultural Exchange.” Co-authored with Martina Tanga. In Cultural Mobilities Between China and Italy, edited by Gaoheng Zhang and Valentina Pedone, 135–169. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.
“’Are They Good Artists?’ Context and Asymmetry in Postwar Sino–Italian Artistic Exchanges.” In Art and Modernism in Socialist China: Unexplored International Encounters, 1949–1979, edited by Shuyu Kong, Julia Andrews, and Shengtian Zheng, 72–89. New York: Routledge, 2024.
“Exhibiting Communist Italy Abroad: The 1956 Artist Delegation to the People's Republic of China.” Co-authored with Martina Tanga for the special issue “Arte e Comunismo in Italia 1943-1964,” edited by Michele Dantini, Luca La Rovere, Emanuele Pellegrini. Predella Journal of Visual Arts, no. 52 (2022): 143–157; XXV–XXXIII.
“On Its Own Terms: Urban Growth and the Arts in Kathmandu, Nepal,” Research Papers, Vol. 12 (Southeast Asia). Seoul: Asia Culture Center, 2023.
“Good Girls and the Good Earth: Shi Lu’s Peasant Women and Socialist Allegory in the Early PRC.” China Perspectives, no. 4 (2021): 61–71.
“Putting New Wine in Old Bottles: Art and Politics in the Maoist Period.” In Fantastic Brush: 20th Century Chinese Ink Arts from the Kessler Collection, 20–27. Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2021.
“Envisioning the Third World: Modern Art and Diplomacy in Maoist China.” ARTMargins 8, no. 2 (2019): 31–54.
“A Chinese Artist in Delhi: Shi Lu and the Art of Diplomacy.” Post (Museum of Modern Art online project). 2017.
